Greg Reierson wrote:Everything in the chain between the original source and signal to the head could be though of a as pre-emphasis (not to mention RIAA...) in an attempt to make the playback sound as close to the source as possible, but it's a moving target. The variation of different geometries and especially different cartridges far outweigh any differences between lacquer and vinyl. This is not a linear medium where a specific offset will always give the desired results. The best you can do is aim for the middle hope the end user has a system that can extract all of the care that you put into the grooves.

I concur for the most part.. I am always aware of the medium I am mastering for, but I handle a range of media so I use a two-step approach. The first half of the chain will be for the sound, and the second half will be for the medium.

For instance I apply the de-esser post RIAA in the second half of the chain, because that's where it makes most sense to me to place it. I cut acetate dubs as well as vinyl dubs, and they each have a very distinct sound of their own, so I have to adjust the RIAA pre-emphasis accordingly. I would not consider these stages until after I had achieved the sound I wanted to achieve coming out of the monitors because I don't want to muddy the waters. Not to mention needing to run off digital masters for reference before and after cutting etc.

Of course, I am happy to accept that there are horses for courses, and comparing apples and oranges is the analogy I often refer my clients to when their vinyl doesn't sound "exactly like" the digital versions. But really what I am looking for here is a baseline difference between playing a lacquer, and a pressing from that exact same lacquer, using the exact same playback set up.

mossboss wrote:Now take a 45 single and place it over that area on a 12" record one will find that it falls within these area assuming that it has around 3 minutes of. Music on it Often people wonder why 45,s are brighter cleaner and very much alive wel that's the reason. Best

On the overpriced piece of plastic I have from Columbia for measuring record dimensions, the spindle is zero and the outside diameter is 11" and change. Same thing for the other things I have. The RIAA spec documents I have list it the same way. The outside diameter of the record is determined by the way the trimmer is set up.

Question: Do we need to make songs that are near the center of a record a bit brighter to compensate hf loss? Or maybe this hf boosting will result only with more distortion? Maybe we need to turn hf down on these last tracks?